The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) (7 page)

Malal’s eye twitched, and then he sank down onto his haunches.

“Contact,” Elias said, “dismounted infantry, hundreds.”

Hale glanced over the trunk. Soldiers, made from the same orange and white glass as the tusk-cats, advanced toward them in a wide column, their pace in lockstep. The front rank carried tear-shaped shields and tall pole-arms that crackled with electricity. Bullet-shaped helmets stuck up from behind the shields, all without slits for eyes or breathing. There was no obvious leader, no banners and no sound other than the mass of feet hitting the ground in unison.

“Sir?” Cortaro asked.

The front rank lowered their halberds over their shields, pointed right at the Marines.

“Open fire!” Hale set his rifle to high power and pulled the trigger. His rifle kicked like a mule. The shot hit a Jinn’s shield and blew it, and the soldier, into fragments.

The thunder of the Iron Hearts’ cannons and Orozco’s Gustav drowned out everything else as Hale tried to aim again. The torrent of shots from the bigger guns annihilated the first dozen ranks as Jinn soldiers exploded into dust. Despite the onslaught of fire, the advance continued.

Hale’s rifle buzzed when he pulled the trigger and a battery icon popped onto his visor. He switched his weapon to low power and got off one last shot that blew the head off a soldier. The rest of the body took another step forward then fell to the ground.

“Low-power head shots!” Hale tossed away the dead battery and slapped in a fresh one.

Red spheres of energy the size of golf balls snapped overhead and the smell of burning ozone hit Hale a moment later. The fire from the Iron Hearts came to a sudden halt.

The three soldiers were frozen in place. Willowy bands of electricity leapt from armor to armor.

“Elias? Can you hear me?” Hale asked.

He heard nothing but static in return.

The tree Hale leaned against bucked as a Jinn energy round hit, knocking Hale to the ground. The trunk blew into splinters as another round tore through, spraying Hale with tiny bits of shrapnel.

Malal stood over Hale, bits of tree embedded in his skin, and reached down to Hale.

“Get down!”

“How many times must I—” a Jinn round hit Malal in the back. Malal’s smug face melted like a candle under a blowtorch. His entire body lost coherence and splashed to the ground, the glowing governor in the center of a quivering puddle.

“Malal?” Stacey crawled over and reached for the gooey mass, stopping short of actually touching it.

The roar of Orozco’s Gustav firing at full cyclic tore Hale away from what had become of their guide. Hale grabbed his rifle and turned it back toward the Jinn.

The soldiers’ advance stopped a few trees away, their halberds pointed skyward. They were still as statues. Orozco methodically swept his cannon across the soldiers, destroying several with each shot.

“Cease fire!” Hale shouted. Orozco’s cannon died down a second later.

“Why’d they stop?” Cortaro asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Hale said. “Anyone hurt?” His Marines answered in sequence, no casualties.

The helms of Jinn soldiers toppled over and broke apart on a carpet of broken glass. Shields fell to the ground. Arms detached from bodies and the remaining Jinn disintegrated in seconds.

“Hale…” Elias’ transmission came in riddled with static. The Iron Heart lurched forward, breaking away from a band of energy that clung between him and Kallen like a spiderweb. The web between the other two Iron Hearts vanished with a pop.

“That was miserable,” Bodel said.

“What happened?”

“Our suits went into lockdown, everything off-line,” Elias said. He touched a hand to his helm, as if dizzy. “Feel like I’m going to puke.”

Kallen fell to her hands and knees and the armor rocked back and forth. Bodel and Elias went to her instantly.

“Yarrow,” Hale said to the corpsman, “see what you can do for her. Stacey, is Malal…dead?”

Stacey ran the small triangle over the Malal-puddle and shook her head as she read off her forearm screen.

“The governor says he’s still…around. Sort of.” She put her hands on her hips.

“Can we take him with us?” Cortaro asked.

“In theory.” Stacey poked the muzzle of her carbine between the governor bands and lifted it up. The goo clung to the bottom of the governor and lifted up with it. “He’s still one big mass. I think we can carry him, somehow.”

“My drill sergeant always said it only takes one battlefield mistake to go home in a bucket,” Standish said, “and we seem to be fresh out of buckets.”

“Standish, empty out your pack and get Malal in there,” Cortaro said.

Standish went pale beneath his visor. “But, Gunney, I already carried that probe in my head back on Nibiru. Who knows what this thing will do to me. What about Yarrow? He’s still the new guy!”

Yarrow brandished his middle finger.

“That’s right, there’s some history between them,” Standish said.

“I’ll get it.” Egan opened the pouch on the small of his back and handed off spare batteries, ammo magazines and tubes of ration paste to Standish. He picked up the governor with his fingertips and lifted it up, Malal clinging to the governor like a soaked towel on a hook.

“OK, here we go.” Egan opened the pouch and tried to guide the lower edge of Malal into the opening. Malal flapped from side to side. Egan let out an un-Marine-like screech and stuffed the governor into the pouch, Malal’s mass draping over the side. Egan scooped it up and tried to stuff it inside.

“Oh God, why is it warm? Why is it warm, Stacey?” Egan got the last of Malal into the pouch and zipped it shut.

Bailey crept over to Standish.

“Did you get that on your armor cameras?” she asked.

“All of it,” Standish whispered.

****

Kallen’s gauntlets trembled, digging into the bed of silver grass beneath her. The HUD integrated into the visor over her eyes flashed warning after warning as the synch rate between her and her armor dropped into the red zone that barely kept the armor functional.

“Desi, can you hear me?” Bodel asked her on a private channel.

“Mm-hmm,” she managed as phantom pain stitched up her armor’s back. If she had any sensation below the neck, she knew the pain would have been unbearable. She’d been diagnosed with Batten’s Disease weeks ago, an illness that would rob what little faculties she had left…and kill her within the year. Her control over the armor had been slipping the past few days; whatever the Jinn hit them with had sent everything into a tailspin.

“Key my serum…I can’t do it on my own,” she said. A patch of warmth spread from the plugs in the base of her skull and the tremors stopped.

“Dr. Eeks said the serum would lose potency with every use. We need to get you out of here,” Bodel said.

“I will leave with everyone else.” She got to her feet and watched as her synch rate with the armor rose to marginal effectiveness. With a high synch rate, she could move with an air of grace and take on both Elias and Bodel in armor-to-armor unarmed combat and stand a good chance of winning. Now, she could shuffle forward with the finesse of an early-model Ibarra construction robot.

Yarrow, Hale and Elias spoke to each other a few yards away.

“Does he know? About the Batten’s?” Kallen asked.

“The corpsman? No. Nothing he can do. Not his business,” Bodel said.

“What about Elias?”

Bodel didn’t answer.

“Damn it, Hans, you promised me.”

“He was about to figure it out on his own. You’ve been degrading for too long for him not to notice.”

“Why…why hasn’t he said anything?”

“He’s waiting for you to tell him. Assuming we get out of here, don’t wait anymore. Some things need to be said.” Bodel broke off the private channel.

Elias’ legs locked straight. Armor plates retracted and treads extended from their housings with a whirr of servos. His upper body slid down to the knees and the tracks hit the ground.

“Crunchies want a ride?” Elias said. “You two good?”

“No problem,” Kallen said. It took three attempts before her armor transformed.

****

Hale ducked beneath a branch as Bodel rumbled beneath a vine tree. Keeping one hand, foot and a knee mag-locked to the armor and trying to keep his rifle ready for any sudden contact
and
ducking branches (which Hale suspected the soldier was deliberately aiming for) was an exercise in coordination and concentration.

“I’ve been thinking,” Stacey said from the other side of Bodel.

“Bad habit,” Hale said.

“What? No, listen. Those Jinn weapons blew the tree to smithereens. Why didn’t they do the same to the armor?” she asked.

“I’m not complaneing,” Bodel said.

“Why’d they give up after they hit Malal?” she asked.

“Ibarra,” Hale said, swaying back to dodge another dangling vine, “you’re worried about a very distant target. I’m trying to figure out how we get into the next part of this vault without Malal. Then, I’m trying to figure out how we get off this rock without Malal to open up the outside. How long until we know if he’ll be all right or we need to find out if any of these trees are edible?”

“We’ve got a structure at our twelve o’clock,” Bodel said. The image of a wide and squat brown building popped up on Hale’s visor.

“All stop. We’ll go in on foot from here,” Hale said. He jumped off Bodel’s track before it came to a complete stop and rushed over to a glow tree. He zoomed in on the structure with the optics on his rifle. The building was two-stories high and looked like it had been cut from a single giant rock. There were no seams or doorways anywhere he could see.

“This is the place,” Hale said. “Gunney, take your fire team and scout around the other side. Let me know if there’s a way in.”

Cortaro, Bailey and Standish took off at a jog.

Egan skipped to the side like he’d been hit with an electric shock.

“Gah! Damn thing moved.” The commo Marine slapped a hand against the pouch containing Malal.

“Check on him,” Stacy said.

Egan unzipped the pouch slowly. Dark swirls moved across the surface.

Malal’s face formed and said, “Let me out.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” Egan tore the pouch off and threw it against a glow tree.

A blobby arm slurped out of the pouch and the rest of Malal pulled free. Malal morphed back into his human shape, no worse for wear. He turned his head to Egan.

“You will never speak of this,” Malal said.

“Fine by me.” Egan went to his empty pouch and hesitated before picking it up.

“What happened? Are you…whole?” Stacey asked.

“The interaction between the energy field of the governor and the Jinn weapon proved…unpleasant,” Malal said. “Had the weapon been a bit stronger, I would have been destroyed. To have my existence ended so close to my goal, and by the combined efforts of humans and Jinn. A tragedy.”

“Nothing on the other side, sir,” Cortaro said.

“I take it you have a way inside,” Hale said to Malal.

“Yes. Give me a moment. Some things are still in flux.” Malal’s chin sunk to his chest.

“Form a perimeter,” Hale said to the Marines. “Soon as he’s done putting his face on, we’ll move out.”

“Hey, Ibarra.” Standish waved to Stacey. She jumped off Bodel and went to him. Standish opened a pouch and removed one of the bullet-shaped heads from a Jinn soldier and handed it to her. “I figure you’re the only one smart enough to figure anything out from this. Well, except for Malal, but he freaks me out.”

“Thanks.” Stacey rolled the object in her hands, her reflection wavering like she was looking into a pond disturbed by a strong breeze. It was half the diameter of her head, a tangle of ripped glass wires at the base.

“You know, there’s no artificial life on Bastion,” she said. “The Qa’Resh probes might make that definition, but they’re so constrained by programming most shut down when forced to choose anything.”

“Why’s that?” Standish asked.

“The Xaros. Any computer system they can access they destroy. Bastion never bothered to recruit or even contact species that were AI and computer dependent. They’d never stand a chance once a single Xaros drone showed up in system and ripped every network to pieces,” she said.

“Guess we were lucky we had the Second Pacific War, forced our military to learn to function without computers,” Standish said.

“You think that was an accident?” Stacey asked.

Malal’s face snapped up.

“I am ready,” he said.

****

The largest cavern Hale had ever seen was the Tycho Dome on Luna. Jared’s senior thesis on asteroid mining had caught the attention of an Ibarra Corporation headhunter, who arranged for Jared and Hale to visit the incomplete dome. Jared’s trip included corporate briefings on the wonders of working for the wealthiest company in human history and a conditional offer of employment. Hale got space sick during the shuttle from the spaceport in Belize to Tycho and spent most of the trip clutching a bag ready for the contents of his stomach.